Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School 11+ Preparation | Leading Tuition

Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School is a co-educational state grammar school in Ramsgate, Kent, formed in 2011 from the merger of the former Chatham House Grammar School for Boys and Clarendon House Grammar School for Girls — which is why families outside east Kent are often surprised to learn the school sits in Ramsgate rather than in the town of Chatham itself. Entry to Year 7 is decided through the Kent Test, the county-wide selective assessment set by Kent County Council and used by all Kent grammar schools. With 180 Year 7 places and 451 applications recorded for the most recent admissions round, the school is well oversubscribed, and thorough, well-timed preparation — ideally starting in Year 4 or Year 5 — gives a child the best possible chance of reaching the qualifying standard and a place within the priority catchment.

What Are the Key Facts and Dates for Chatham & Clarendon Grammar 11+ Entry?

The table below sets out the essential facts and 2027-entry key dates for Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School, based on information published by Kent County Council and the school itself.

Because these dates apply to the September 2026 test sitting — which is for entry to Year 7 in September 2027, not September 2026 — this cycle's registration window has already closed for anyone who has not yet applied. Families now beginning preparation, for example with a child currently in Year 4 or 5, are working towards the following cycle: a test sat in September 2027, leading to entry in September 2028. Kent County Council's registration pattern has been consistent for several years — typically opening around 1 June and closing around 1 July the year before entry — so it is reasonable to plan around those dates while awaiting official confirmation nearer the time. The school publishes its full admission arrangements directly on its own site — see the Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School admissions page for the current year's supplementary forms and open week details.

What Does the Kent Test Involve at Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School?

Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School does not set its own entrance paper for Year 7 transfer. Like every other Kent grammar school, it relies entirely on the Kent Test, administered centrally by Kent County Council. A child registering for the Kent Test is automatically considered for any Kent grammar school named as a preference on the Secondary Common Application Form, so a single sitting covers Chatham & Clarendon alongside any other Kent grammar schools a family lists.

All scored elements of the Kent Test are multiple-choice, completed on a separate answer sheet and marked by computer, so there is no examiner discretion in the scoring of Papers 1 and 2. Each child receives a standardised score for English, mathematics and reasoning, plus a total. Individual component scores range from 69 to 141, giving a maximum possible total of 423. The standardisation process adjusts for the child's exact age in months at the time of the test, so a child born in August is not disadvantaged relative to a classmate born the previous September.

The unscored writing exercise is easy to underestimate. Because it carries no numerical weight, some families skip preparing for it altogether — but Kent's own guidance confirms it can be referred to by a headteacher panel where a child's Kent Test score sits close to the qualifying line, so a well-structured, well-paced piece of writing is still worth practising under the same 40-minute time pressure as the real test.

How Competitive Is Entry to Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School?

With 451 applications against 180 available places in the most recent admissions round, roughly six children apply for every four places at Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School. Once a child achieves the Kent Test grammar qualifying standard — 332 total in the 2025 cohort, with no individual score below 108 — the school's oversubscription criteria are applied in a fixed order. Priority goes first to children with an Education, Health and Care Plan naming the school, then children in or previously in local authority care, then children with a demonstrated medical or social need, then pupil premium and service premium children, then siblings of current pupils, then children of staff. After those categories, priority passes to children living in the school's named area — Thanet, Broomfield, Chestfield, Herne, Herne Bay, Reculver, Swalecliffe and Whitstable — before finally extending to all other eligible children ranked by straight-line distance from home to school.

This means a Kent Test pass alone does not guarantee a place. A child scoring comfortably above 332 but living well outside the named priority area may still miss out to a child from within it, purely on distance once the higher-priority categories are filled. Families outside the priority postcodes should treat the published 332 figure as a floor, not a target, and aim to maximise their child's score across all three assessed areas rather than relying on scraping the qualifying standard.

The school's own results underline why competition is intense. In the 2025 GCSE results, 27% of all grades awarded were at the top 9–8 level, 47% were at grade 9–7, and the school reported a 95% overall pass rate across grades 9–4. Thirty students achieved nine or more GCSEs at grades 7–9, with the highest-performing student in the 2025 cohort — Obinna Uliem — achieving ten grade 9s and one grade 8. Headteacher Debra Liddicoat described the cohort's results as reflecting "the dedication, resilience and perseverance they have shown," language that reflects a school culture built around sustained effort rather than raw selection alone.

What Sets Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School Apart Right Now?

Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School was inspected by Ofsted in September 2025, with the report published on 13 October 2025, and the school retained its overall Good rating across every judgement area. What makes this inspection genuinely worth reading in full is its context: it was the school's first inspection since completing its move to fully mixed-gender teaching across every year group, having begun as two separate single-sex schools before their 2011 merger. Many published 11+ guides for this school — including some prep sites we reviewed while researching this page — still quote an Ofsted judgement from 2018 or 2019, well before that transition was complete, so families relying on those sources are working from an out-of-date picture of how the school runs day to day.

The 2025 report is worth quoting directly because of what it says about that transition. Inspectors found pupils "happy and successful at this caring and ambitious school," noted that pupils "rise to the high aspirations that the school has for them," and specifically observed that "the school is calmer now that classes are mixed" — a direct, positive verdict on the co-education move that is easy to miss if you are reading a guide built on older data. Careers guidance was singled out as "impressive," and inspectors noted that staff felt "enthused by the support that they have received" during the change.

Academically, the school's most recent GCSE results place it firmly among the stronger performers in east Kent: 27% of grades at 9–8, 47% at 9–7, and a 95% overall pass rate in summer 2025, with 30 pupils securing nine or more grades at 7 or above. Combined with a fresh, favourable Ofsted judgement that specifically addresses the practical realities of the newly co-educational structure, this is a school that has changed meaningfully in the last two to three years — and any family basing a decision on an older review, or an 11+ guide that hasn't been updated since, is missing that context.

How Should You Prepare for the Chatham & Clarendon Grammar 11+?

Effective Kent Test preparation is built up gradually rather than crammed in the final term before the test. Because the test covers English, mathematics, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning — three genuinely different skill sets plus a timed writing task — a scattergun approach in Year 6 rarely produces the consistent scores needed across all three components to clear 332 comfortably.

Year 4 (optional early start): Focus on enjoyment and fluency rather than exam practice. Build core arithmetic through games and puzzles, encourage wide reading across fiction and non-fiction to grow vocabulary — the single strongest predictor of verbal reasoning performance — and introduce light, low-pressure non-verbal reasoning puzzles. No timed testing at this stage.

Year 5, September (structured preparation): Begin systematic work across all three Kent Test areas using age-appropriate question banks. Verbal reasoning benefits from consistent weekly exposure over a long period, since the hardest question types rely on vocabulary depth that cannot be built quickly. Push maths fluency beyond the standard school curriculum in multi-step problem solving, and introduce non-verbal reasoning with explanation of why each answer is correct, rather than pure timed drilling.

Year 5, January onward: Increase session frequency and start introducing timed section practice, tracking performance against difficulty level to identify weak areas. Begin light, low-pressure practice for the 40-minute creative writing exercise, focused on planning structure and pacing rather than polish.

Year 6, September through the test: Run full timed mock papers under exam conditions at least monthly. Sitting two consecutive timed papers plus a writing task is itself a skill many children have not practised, and unfamiliarity with the format costs marks independently of ability. Work on remaining weak areas with targeted practice, register for the Kent Test within the June–July window, and confirm which schools to name as preferences on the Common Application Form ahead of the 31 October deadline.

Summer before the test: Maintain a light schedule of two to three sessions a week of mixed practice through the summer holidays. Since the test falls in the second week of September, children need to be exam-ready before the new school year begins rather than cramming once term has started.

For families exploring options beyond Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School, our Kent 11+ borough guide covers the wider Kent Test landscape, and our guides to Tonbridge Grammar School and Weald of Kent Grammar School may be useful if you are considering other Kent grammar preferences on the same application. Our general 11+ Tuition page explains how we structure preparation across all the major 11+ test formats, and the full list of schools we cover is on our 11+ School Guides hub.

Frequently Asked Questions About Chatham & Clarendon Grammar 11+ Entry